• COVID-19 SYMPTOMS UPDATE FROM C.D.C: (1) Symptoms may appear 2 -14 days after exposure; (2) Known original symptoms remain priority – Fever, Cough, Shortness of Breath; (3) Additional symptoms now include – Chills, Repeated Shaking, Muscle Pain, Headache, Sore Throat; (4) A possible sign that patients could be carrying the virus without symptoms is mysterious blue or red discoloration in toes or fingers.
  • U.S. NATIONAL DEBT JUST HIT THE $24 TRILLION MARK, that’s 24 thousand Billions, with more Trillions on the way for additional pandemic support. Who is that money, papered primarily as Treasury Bills, owed to? Roughly 25% to foreign governments (over a third to China & Japan), and the balance to U.S. citizens.  Around 22% was money ‘borrowed’ from social security, Medicare, military & government retirement funds, whose long-term reserves were utilized to cover current budget deficits by the last several Administrations & Congress. Another 33% came as ‘investment’ by the Federal Reserve, and the 20% balance similarly ‘invested’ from state & local governments/ private pensions/ insurance companies/ corporations/ etc. with excess assets. Ultimately the payback money comes from future taxation, which is why the millennial and Z generations are balking at ongoing profligate spending for arguably worthwhile purposes, as they see it – especially since the magnitude of money required for ‘payback’ is implausible.
  • MOST STATES ALLOW ‘MAIL-IN BALLOTS’ and some 26% of nationwide votes were cast by mail in 2018. Voter fraud has been “exceedingly rare and without evidence of significant problems,” but whether to allow or order this process in November’s Presidential election, as coronavirus poses a still possible threat to voters & poll-workers, has now become a contentious partisan debate, along with also whether the practice called ‘ballot harvesting,’ which allows 3rd-parties to collect and deliver ballots, should be allowed.  In 2018, California campaigns hired workers to deliver stacks of up to 200 ballots purportedly on behalf of elderly, handicapped & other homebound voters, but the practice was challenged (by the loser party) with having “enabled campaign operatives to influence votes, obtain blank ballots for subsequent filled out, and even to tear up ballots without anyone watching.” Just one more fun aspect of American politics.  [THE WEEK – 5/1/20]
  • LATEST SCAMS ARE COVID-19 PROFITEERS: “Frauds in lab coats & surgical masks, claiming to be Health Dep’t Officials offer to give a (phony) test at small charge directly to the victim’s bank account; Online scammers pose as federal officials and offer to deposit the $1,200 stimulus check directly into victim’s bank account; Solicitors for fake pandemic charities are everywhere; Quacks peddle solutions of ‘colloidal silver’ as cures and fake testing kits. [SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL]
  • THE HYSTERIA SURROUNDING AMERICANS’ REACTION TO COVID-19 is predominantly a reaction to the “strange collusionary effect of U.S. media progressives quoting chapter and verse both Chinese communist propaganda and European Union pontifications – all invested in seeing president Trump discredited and defeated in the November election… Had Trump not been president, had he not just been impeached, had he not previously galvanized resistance to Chinese mercantile piracy, had China not lied about the virus, had it not originated in Wuhan, had it not been a new sort of virus, had we not yet been in a globalized world of instant communications and cheap and easy intercontinental travel, had the media not been 90 percent negative in its prior reporting on Trump, had it not been an election year in 2020, and had Trump’s popularity not spiked but crashed during the epidemic—then the hysteria might have been prevented, and the United States might have reacted with care and concern but without the veritable destruction of its economy and the human damage that it entailed.” [NEW CRITERION – May 20]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

      FDA has just authorized a $119 home testing kid for COVID-19, branded Pixel, requiring only a nose swab to be mailed in.

      How often does our quick view (and decision process) neglect the moment it would take for a closer look and deeper understanding? Like looking closely at the images below: